Elizabeth Ames Jones

Ron Paul released his first T.V. campaign add of the 2012 Presidential race. The clip looks like the preview for a summer action-movie starring Indiana Paul. Want to know more about Paul, including whether he stands behind his claims to fiscal conservatism? Check out our links.

State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said Wednesday he was “very encouraged” by a statewide weekend poll of Republican voters that he said demonstrated he holds a significant lead over other potential candidates in the Republican primary race to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

“This poll confirms that I would be the conservative front runner if I announce for the United States Senate,” Patrick said. He said he will make a decision about whether to join the race sometime this summer.

Sheila Jackson Lee definitely gets more global press than any member of the Texas delegation. The high-profile Houston Democrat has made headlines for her pronouncements on subjects ranging from Pakistan to Vietnam, the Fifth Ward to Mars, civil rights to Republican wrongs.

But over the weekend, she earned a new distinction: a highly favorable story in the Chinese Communist Party’s “People’s Daily.”

The Republican women in southeast Texas appear to have an early favorite for the 2012 Senate race to fill retiring GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s seat: former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz. Cruz won a straw poll conducted by the Greater Houston Council of Republican Women.
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Houston Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has an uncanny ability to work her way into a photo. Whether the event features Bono or Barack Obama, you can count on seeing at least one picture featuring the Texas Democrat. Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyaman Netanyahu was on Capitol Hill. And our friend Scott Applewhite’s AP photo of Netanyahu greeting members of Congress featured . . . you guessed it, Sheila Jackson Lee.
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MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews and Rep. Ron Paul butted heads over the libertarian’s take on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the legislation that outlawed major forms of discrimination against blacks. Paul, who announced his presidential candidacy last week, said he objected to the Civil Rights Act because of its infringement on private property rights.
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Republican lawmakers and state regulators blasted the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to broadly study the controversial hydraulic fracturing process that is essential to unlocking natural gas from shale formations across the U.S.

Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee that was studying the issue today, questioned EPA’s objectivity in launching the probe.

Ricardo Sanchez tells of growing up knowing that no one expected him to succeed. The Texas border’s system of discrimination, which forced his father to use the back door to enter a McAllen bar, also threatened to shackle future generations of Hispanics.

But as he ponders an improbable run as a Democrat for the seat held by longtime Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in one of the nation’s reddest states, Sanchez isn’t daunted.